Saturday, May 30, 2015

Welcome to our weekly round-up of our fav links to other blogs, web sites, images, and articles, all gathered for you via Twitter.
• Gundry & Sons, makers of Queen Victoria's wedding slippers.
• "Covered with Egyptian darkness": New England's dark day of May 19, 1780.
• "I am left to tramp the tiled floor of my cell in lonely meditation": 19thc. prison memoirs.
• Was angora wool fashionable for 19thc. handwork?
• The lucky charms carried by soldiers during WWI.
• Image: This late 19thc. gentleman is the definition of swagger.
• Ruins for sale: a 10thc. castle goes well beyond "handyman's special."
• Samurai and courtesans: Japanese life in 1865 captured in early color photographs.
• The historical inspiration for the "Red Wedding" of Game of Thrones.
• Image: Wedding portrait of Cornelia Vanderbilt, 1924.
• "Will it never be day?" On the night of June 17, 1815, the Duke of Wellington waited to hear if Blücher would agree to march and join him at Mont St. Jean.
• Foil-ing the plans of the Baroness de Meyer, 1911.
• Life below stairs: duties of a Georgian housemaid.
• The Battle of Waterloo through the eyes of a modern war photographer.
• Image: Preparing for a pairs diveat the Toronto Ladies Swimming Club, c1925.
• Patriotic shoes: were these 1780s shoes made from the fragments of a Revolutionary War flag?
• The death of Queen Victoria, and the politics of mourning in the British Persian Gulf.
• The burning matter of English witches.
• Image: Manchester's "centrifugal railway," 1842 - basically an early roller-coaster.
• Skittles and sailors: how the naval pensioners were entertained in the 1860s at the Greenwich Royal Hospital for Seamen.
• Biographical cartoons of notable Black Americans, drawn during WWII to promote unity.
• The widow and the law: a brief history of widows' pensions in Britain.
• Image: Trend alert! Two nearly identical dresses worn in two separate photographs from the 1860s.
• Marie-Antoinette's armchair is among the treasures soon to be auctioned.
• Stylish if not practical: 1920s nursing uniforms.
• Dracula: fact, legend, and fiction.
• Just for fun: In La Belle Epoque, it was not uncommon to see dinosaurs living in even the most fashionable arrondissements of Paris (though something may have been lost in translation - more here.)Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring.

I was drawn to the Sailors and skittles story. People in authority usually make decisions for the residents based on what would be "good for them" or what they should be grateful for. Here was a facility based on what the residents actually wanted !!! How cool is that?

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.